How To Be Ready For Having Kids

11 Step Program For Those Thinking Of Having Kids

Take A Goat To The Grocery Store

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to
sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway potless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.


1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.

Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend  to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying
melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Nick Jr. for at least five years.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Source: Baby Gizmo Blog

Second Quarter

April already! We're into the second quarter of the new year. I was going to do a post about how horrified I am that I haven't blogged for a while (I'm truly kind of shocked) but I decided to just pick myself up from here and move on. It would be pointless to try to capture all that has transpired in the last three months. I have been working, and at school, and trying to keep up with other things. I admit that I could benefit from a little more commitment.

One of my longtime friends is visiting for a week. We met on my first day at a new school over 20 years ago and we've been friends ever since. She lives in Florida now and I see her whenever she visits: an average of once every two years. She has been inviting me to come visit for YEARS now and something always gets in the way. I even went so far as to "promise" I would visit in 2012 and then it just wasn't possible. And now, I've toyed with the idea of joining her on her return trip. But, again, it's really just not a good time for me. I'm hoping that I can spend some of the Summer in Florida but I'm just going to keep that to myself till I know for sure.

I went to the beach two days ago. It was an impromptu trip and we really didn't know we were going to end up at the beach on the other end of the island. I wasn't prepared and didn't have a suit but the water was so perfect for swimming. Still, it was a nice day and must have done something for me. I got back home and slept for about 15 hours - effectively ending the major sleep deficits that had been accumulating nightly for the past week.

After a less than great presentation last evening, I'm devoting this weekend to studying and working on graded assignments. This is what I should have been doing for the past week or two but instead, I have been out at the movies, hanging out at dinner with friends, reading books at home...at the beach.

I'm about to head to the post office where I'll collect some books that I ordered, as well as a laptop for my mom, so I'm going to end this here. But I'll be back soon. By the way, this is my first post from my iPad. I got a bluetooth keyboard and decided I'd like to try it and it's working really well. If the pics post correctly here I might use it more often, and perhaps that will help me blog more regularly.

New Year's Decisions

Happy 2013!

Here we are again! If you're reading this, you're as blessed as I am to have lived to see another year. It's always sobering for me to listen to the news and realize that some people didn't live to see a new year because death came suddenly, and unexpectedly, just a day or mere hours before January 1. I'm also very grateful that every one of my family members is still here with me. God has been merciful and kind.

The past year was a difficult one for me. Most people wouldn't be able to tell by just looking. I wrestled with complacency for much of the year, as well as busyness. I had a job transfer that involved a long commute and ate into whatever was left of my evenings. I also went back to school (university for the second time) and initially had a sense of dread about how I would fit back into a lifestyle of projects, study and examinations. And that's just the half of it. 2012 was a difficult year. 

This morning I made some New Year's Resolutions Decisions. I made a list of some simple things that I need to start doing, stop doing, and otherwise adjust. The key thing was that they were not pie-in-the-sky declarations. Just small everyday tweaks that need to be made, for which I know the weight of minute-by-minute choices rests squarely on my shoulders. I know that the little things will add up to major gains in the long term, and make the way for big things to happen. First and foremost is clearing the time in my schedule to once again engage the Bible for deeper topical and word study. It was incredibly refreshing for me to start another one-year daily Bible reading plan this morning (and to have successfully completed one in 2012), but I am longing to get back into more academic study (with all my heart, of course).

This year will hold a myriad of things. There will be difficulties to overcome, and good things to praise God for. I don't even try to forecast or daydream anymore. But I can prepare. So I'll be holding on to Jesus, depending on God's grace, staying in the Word, and aiming for measurable, observable growth.

How about you? Did you resolve or decide to do anything specific this year?

10 Things I Love About Christmas

In no particular order...

1. The air is cool and crisp and Chrismassy (the only time of the year where I am)
2. Laughing children, lighthearted conversation with family 
3. Presents and gift-wrapping paper
4. Movie parties with family
5. Playing games
6. Extra-special yummy things to eat
7. Christmas music 
8. The reflection and happy nostalgia it evokes
9. Joy and peace just seem to be easier to hold on to
10. That I get to belong to Jesus and everything else has new meaning!

It's The Simple Things In Life

It's an 'unwind-relax-and thank God for life and time-off' thing around here. It happens over the summer vacation, at special celebrations, and of course for the major holidays like Christmas. I find a crew of family members hunkered down with me for movie marathons which I have started to refer to as movie parties. People are welcome; snacks and finger foods, almost required. It's so much fun.

I love to step back and observe everyone in my domain just having fun. It's heartwarming to see the kids laughing and having fun, to hear the opinions and exclamations about the movie, to see everyone just spending that time there together. Of course, there are the moments when someone has to shout at someone else about their noise level (we all want to hear what's happening in the movie after all), or someone is plotting about how to get the last snack, or someone 'stole' someone else's seating place. But it's life, and it's family, and it's time together. It's very cool.

We had the first movie party of the holiday season yesterday. It was impromptu and we had no snacks...well one of my sisters had one bag of barbecue chips. But it was great. I just loved having them here, on my couch and upsetting my orderly and neat space for a while. A cleanup and/or straightening out process is always necessary in the aftermath but it's so worth it.

You know, before the semester ended, and before my holiday vacation began, I had been guilt-tripping about my social media visits (which did go on way too long when I should have been studying etcetera). I imagined I would be freely and lengthily catching up with the Twitter and Facebook worlds once the holidays officially began for me. Needless to say, from that time exactly, I have had little desire to spend my time browsing social media. I guess there is just some perspective right now. These precious moments and opportunities aren't there all the time. And they end all too soon. It really is the simple things in life that matter most. Simple things make the most authentic and happy memories. We should never be in a hurry to leave them behind, and never substitute them for anything else.

Christmas Expectations

Christmas means more to me the older I get. But I hardly spend it in some unique Christmassy way. It's now a quiet, but satisfying, day for me. Of course there's extra special stuff going on around me and I am fortunate to live surrounded by family members. My nieces and nephews will most certainly regale me with the show of all their new gifts and toys. We will play games and then have a 'movie party,' which is a marathon of family-friendly movies, complete with snacks. There's special lunch and then we find ourselves continuing to snack through the day.

The older I get the more satisfaction I have in simply seeing people happy with the presents I gave them, or that they received. I especially love to see the little ones and hear them laughing often. This really stood out to me last year. It made me grasp just how much God must enjoy blessing us and seeing us gratefully enjoy His gifts!

This year, I'm also focusing in on how much I have to be thankful for. A new year is so close and by God's grace, here I am yet again. He is still keeping me, working in my life, delivering me, and loving me.

This year, I also can't help but think of the fresh tragedy that will mark this season for so many that have lost their loved ones recently. I cannot fathom the grief. There are many others who are very lonely and it becomes more pronounced at this time of the year. Many hate the day because they are continually disappointed....It's so important to be gentle and gracious with the Grinches and Scrooges we encounter during this season.

Christmas can be a very normal day for me if I want it to be. Nothing is expected of me. I have no entertaining to do, no kids to chase after, and no kitchen to manage (though I will be cooking and baking for my parents that day). But I also know that with conscientious reflection on the important things, and with a grateful heart, it is elevated to something much more memorable.

As I get older I think about what the Holiday is supposed to memorialize more now than ever before: Jesus Christ, God's righteousness revealed. That's the one truth we need to make Christmas meaningful no matter what else we may lack. Think about it. Pray and thank God for it. Sing about it. And Christmas joy is sure to rise up and overflow. It's a wonderful thing to be loved by a great God who would reach out to you with His very best, before you even knew Him. Christmas is about God saying to you and me: 'I want to reconcile you to Myself. I love you, and I want you in My household.' That's pretty amazing.

For Christmas 2012 I have simple, but great expectations :)

A Bit-O-Humor!

Most people assume WWJD is for "What would Jesus do?". But the initials really have been changed to stand for "What would Jesus drive?".

One theory is that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because the Bible says, "God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury".

But in Psalm 83, the Almighty clearly owns a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the Jesus to "pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm".

Perhaps God favors Dodge pickup trucks, because Moses' ollowers are warned not to go up a mountain "until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast".

Some scholars insist that Jesus drove a Honda but didn't like to talk about it. As proof, they cite a verse in St. John's gospel where Christ tells the crowd, "For I did not speak of my own Accord..."

Meanwhile, Moses rode an old British motorcycle, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring that "the roar of Moses' Triumph is heard in the hills".

Joshua drove a Triumph sports car with a hole in its muffler: "Joshua's Triumph was heard throughout the land". And, following Jesus' lead, the Apostles car pooled in a Honda... "The Apostles were in one Accord."

{Something funny that I came across a long time ago online. Don't know who came up with this - except that it had to have been a car lover!}